If you take the Selfist Score survey, you get one number on top. That number is useful. It's also kind of a lie. Nobody is uniformly Selfist or uniformly anything. You are strong in some places and getting eaten alive in others, and the single number averages out the texture.
The eight dimensions are the texture.
They were chosen because they cover the eight places a person most commonly leaks energy without noticing. If you closed your eyes and asked yourself "where does my life lose pressure?", the answer is almost always in one of these eight.
1. Boundaries
This is the dimension everyone has heard of and almost nobody is good at. It's the simple question of whether you can say no when you mean no.
The selfish failure here is rigidity. Walls so thick that no genuine ask gets through. The selfless failure is porousness. Every ask gets through, even the ones that shouldn't. The Selfist version is a clear "yes" or "no" without a paragraph of justification underneath it. "I can help on Sunday. Not today." That's a complete sentence.
2. Self-Worth
The question this one asks: where does your sense of being okay come from?
If it comes from other people's approval, you'll always be tuning yourself for whoever's in front of you. If it comes from inside, you can take a compliment without spinning out and a criticism without collapsing. Self-worth in this sense is not about high self-esteem. It's about the source. Internal source is what makes the rest of the practice work.
3. Time
Time is moral. Where you spend it is where your actual priorities live, no matter what you tell yourself.
The selfless person gives their time away in slivers — a coffee here, a favour there, a long phone call with someone who never asks how you are — and then wonders why their own life isn't progressing. The selfish person hoards it and accidentally turns into a hermit. The Selfist treats time like money. They have a finite amount. They decide where it goes. They notice when other people are spending it without permission.
4. Emotions
This one is the most overlooked, in my experience.
The question: whose feelings are you carrying? The selfless person walks into a room, senses tension, and immediately starts trying to fix it as though it were their own. The selfish person walks into the same room and notices nothing because they have learned to numb out. The Selfist walks in, registers the tension, files it under "not mine," and goes on with what they came to do.
You can be deeply empathic and still not absorb. Empathy is information. Absorption is a malfunction.
5. Truth
How much of the real you shows up in the room?
Selfless failure: a polished, careful, room-reading version of you. You adjust to what they'd find acceptable. The selfish version: a loud, dominant version that's edited in the opposite direction — to be impressive, not lovable. The Selfist version is the same person in every room. Same temperature. Same opinions. Adjusted for context, not constructed for it.
6. Relationships
This is where the other five dimensions meet other people, and where most of us bleed.
Selfless: when love is on the line, you fold. Every time. You apologise first even when you're not the one who was wrong. The selfish version is the inverse. You'd rather be right than close. You win arguments and lose people. The Selfist holds their ground without losing their warmth. They can love someone who is currently being unreasonable, without joining them in the unreason.
7. Mind
Your inner monologue. The voice that comments on everything you do, all day, every day.
Selfless mind: a chronic inner critic that punishes you for taking up space, calls you an idiot for making mistakes, and replays awkward conversations from 2014 at 2am. Selfish mind: an inner monologue that blames everyone else and never sits with the question "could I have been wrong?" Selfist mind: a coach. Honest, useful, not flattering, not cruel.
The mind dimension is the one most likely to be silently running half your life. People treat the inner monologue as just "how I am." It isn't. It's a habit. Habits change.
8. Money
The dimension self-help usually skips because it's awkward.
Money behaviour follows almost identical lines to emotional behaviour. The selfless person gives money away easily, lends without expecting it back, can't ask for what they're worth, and feels guilty when they spend on themselves. The selfish person holds money tight, says no without explanation, refuses to subsidise, and treats every dinner bill as a battle. The Selfist treats money as energy. They give where it matters. They ask where they've earned. They spend on joy. They feel none of it as shame.
If you find that one dimension is wildly out of step with the others — your mind dimension is much lower than the rest, say — that's almost always where to start the work. It's the load-bearing wall.
How the dimensions interact
The eight aren't independent. They lean on each other.
Strong boundaries are basically impossible without decent self-worth, because saying no requires believing you have the right to. Emotional ownership requires a working mind dimension, because the inner monologue is what decides whether to absorb or notice. Money behaviour mirrors self-worth almost perfectly — people who can't ask for a raise usually also can't accept a compliment.
The corollary: if you fix one dimension, two others move with it. You don't have to work on all eight. You have to find the one that, when it shifts, pulls the others up with it. That's usually the one you're avoiding.
The single Selfist Score is the headline. The dimensions are where the work actually happens.
The survey gives you a per-dimension breakdown — eight bars, not one number. The weakest bar is usually the most useful place to look.
Take the Selfist Score →Where to start, if you only have ten minutes
Don't try to fix everything. Pick the dimension that, when you read its name, you felt a small flinch. That's the one. The flinch is data.
For the next seven days, just watch that one dimension. Don't try to change anything yet. Notice when it shows up. Notice what triggers it. Notice the body's reaction. After a week, you'll have more material for change than five years of vague resolution.
The book has chapters on each dimension. The app, when it ships, will have scenarios for each. The survey gives you the baseline. But the watching — that's the part nobody can do for you.